


letters you'll never see

by elisu



Series: you're the only friend i need [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Airports, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Idols, Angst, Best Friends, Coming of Age, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Goodbyes, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soulmates, Vignette, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:08:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24110335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elisu/pseuds/elisu
Summary: Chenle would never say it out loud, that all he wants is for something to go terribly wrong. Someone to change their mind. A switch to be flipped or anything really, anything to stop him from getting on that plane.Like on previous occasions, he doesn't get what he wants.
Relationships: Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le
Series: you're the only friend i need [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1739584
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40





	letters you'll never see

**Author's Note:**

> ribs - lorde

Jisung cries on the way to the airport. Cries even more when Chenle leans closer to him and takes his hands to hold in his own. The car ride isn't a long one, but the minutes seem to go by too fast yet achingly slowly at the same time.

Chenle would never say it out loud, that all he wants is for something to go terribly wrong. Someone to change their mind. A switch to be flipped or anything really, anything to stop him from getting on that plane.

Like on previous occasions, he doesn't get what he wants.

They're at the airport, some several minutes after checking in Chenle’s luggage and boarding pass. They’re at the benches next to the big glass window, watching as dreams in winged metal ships ascend into the skies and leave behind homes for bigger, better things. And they sit in silence.

Chenle looks over at Jisung, who’s glaring at the parked planes on the other side of the glass like a hurt child, eyes still wet and mouth pursed shut in an ever-so-slightly quivering pout. He nudges him gently, and leans his face close to Jisungs, eyes wide and a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “Hey,” he murmurs, voice soft like a lullaby, “you okay?” Jisung ignores him, lowering his gaze to the floor. His hands are closed tightly, one on top of the other in a tense death-grip that turns his knuckles white. His feet fidget restlessly in his red canvas shoes, making up for the movements he’s hiding from his face, or at the very least trying to.

(He is not doing a very good job)

When Chenle nudges him again, he crosses his arms and stares up at the ceiling. He tries again, with puppy-dog eyes and arms crossed of his own. After a few more moments of silence, Jisung lets out a shaky exhale and brings his attention to the blue and white plane that’s currently making its way onto the runway. “No,” he whispers, tears starting to fall again, “How could I be? My best friend is leaving me behind.”

And Chenle feels his heart break all over again.

“Come here,” he says softly, bringing Jisung into a close hug. Almost immediately he feels his best friend’s tenseness melt away, the anger and edge softening into something that feels like catharsis. Like a ‘you’ll be okay. We’ll both be,’ spoken at three in the morning when everything looks uncertain and the world is so much bigger and scarier than you thought. An ‘I’ll always be there for you,’ when you’ve blown out your nineteen candles and the guests have gone home but all you want to do is cry. Chenle wants nothing more than to be able to hold Jisung between his arms forever, to shield him from all the bad things in the world.

But he can’t.

Jisung is curious. Kind. Possesses a type of love that Chenle thinks could build galaxies.

Chenle remembers the day he got home from a meeting. The meeting. All he could think about on the car ride back was how he was going to have to break the news to the others. Turns out, though, by the time he’d reached home they’d already been told.

It was a sickening feeling, the one he’d gotten when he hung his coat on the rack by the front door and turned around to see a crying Jeno.

Jeno never cried.

Neither did Renjun, apparently, before that day. Nor Hyuck. Nor Jaemin. Not even when they’d graduated themselves, because China is a long way away.They’d sat in silence at the dinner table that evening, none of them bothering to try and hide their dismay. “Have they told Jisung yet?” Chenle asked, expressionless as he chewed on a dumpling.  
“I assume they have. His dance practise ends at eight, so they probably broke the news to him as soon as he’d finished,” Jaemin had replied in a similar tone.

And Chenle remembers Renjun adding, “they like to do that, don’t they. They like to leave us clueless until the last minute and then give us bad news.”

And Chenle couldn’t help but agree.

Chenle remembers Jisung coming home that night, in tears, and putting his head down on the coffee table to sob, silently, while waiting in the living room for Chenle to put the dumplings in the microwave and heat up some broccoli for his dinner.

He didn’t eat when Chenle put the plate down on the table, not even when he asked him to. Just hugged his knees to his chest and buried his head in them like a child. Chenle sat next two him, leaning on the sofa, and sighed.

After what must have felt like years, Jisung finally raised his head, eyes red and face wet. “Why does it have to be you,” he choked out, still shaking as if someone had grabbed him by the chest and stolen the breath right out of his lungs. “Of everyone they could have taken-,” he started, then broke down into sobs again.

Chenle was in pain himself, like someone had taken his heart in their hands and crushed it between their fingers. He felt nothing if not guilt for the boy shaking between his arms, and hoped that he’d done enough.

He could feel Jisung’s heartbeat against his, his choked cries as he sobbed violently into the living room floor.

Happiness is short-lived, Chenle learns that night.

“I could always stay,” Chenle muses, “I could always sneak into their office and burn our contracts and we could be free and run away and live in a cottage in the woods,”

That makes Jisung smile. “And what, live without a microwave?” he retorts, sniffing.

“Who said our cottage can’t have a microwave? We can have a super cottage with dogs and cats and electricity AND a microwave.”

Jisung is giggling now, finally. Chenle sees the light return to his eyes and thinks he feels all his problems melt away, just for a moment. He leans his head on his shoulder, sighing. How much longer do we have together, he thinks. How much longer until all is but a memory?

“You should go,” Jisung says, a note of finality in his voice as he stares at the clear December sky. His tears have dried up and his breathing has slowed. Chenle doesn’t see this sense of serenity, of reality in Jisung often. It scares him.

“I am,” Chenle hums, voice barely a whisper. “And so soon,”

“There’ll be better things in China,” Jisung continues, rubbing circles into the back of Chenle’s hand.

“Not better than you,”

“I know,” Jisung murmurs, “I know.”

The time for him to leave comes far too soon. Chenle feels his own hands quiver as they grasp Jisung’s ever so tightly. “It’s okay Lele,” Jisung says softly, “you’ll be okay.” He wants to believe it, but he’s terrified.

“It’s time for you to go now,” he gestures towards the gate. Chenle nods, small and fast, but can’t seem to let go of his hands. Jisung is smiling warmly. A little sadly, but warmly all the same.

Chenle’s been dragged into Jisung’s bedroom to watch k-dramas at ungodly hours of the night far too many times. He’s turned up his nose, disgusted, at the pretty male lead who begs the pretty female lead (who clearly has a plane to catch) to stay, and yelled, “Oh COME on,” when she does, while Jisung cries into his blanket and the characters kiss in the middle of the airport.

But he kind of gets it now.

Kind of.

He gets it when he pulls Jisung into one last tight hug, and Jisung whispers one last ‘good luck’ into his ear. He gets it when Jisung thanks him, starting to tear up again, but nods towards the gate.

Why is he so calm? Why is he so fearless? Why isn’t Jisung grabbing his hand, kissing him on the mouth, begging him to miss his flight and run away with him?

“I...I-,” Chenle stammers, feeling sick to the stomach.

“Go, Lele. We’ll see each other again. I promise.”

And so he goes.

Chenle thinks his hands are still shaking by the time he’s reached the waiting room. His feet are heavy and his head, light. Nothing seems real at this point.

He feels a buzz in his pocket and takes out his phone to see that Jisung’s texted him.

1:58 pm jisung: im home!  
Read 1:58pm

Chenle takes no time at all calling him, and sits in the corner of the waiting room while the phone rings. Jisung picks up within seconds. “Lele! Long time no see!” he chirps from the other side, and Chenle rolls his eyes. “Yes Jisungie I’ve missed you,”

“You’re in the waiting room right now?”

“Yup,”

“Have you filled up your drink bottle yet?”

“Yup,”

“Sounds like you’re all set, then,”

Chenle pauses. “...nope,”

“No? What have you got left to do?” Jisung replies, in the tone of a kindergarten teacher speaking to one of their students. Teasing, but not quite in a teasing way.

“Just one thing...” Chenle says, “Jisung do you remember the box that I put in the back of our wardrobe? The one I caught you looking at when we first moved in?”

Jisung laughs. “Of course I do, you were so mad at me,”

“Yeah… yeah. Jisung, can you open it for me? I want you to see what’s inside,”

“Okay…” Chenle hears footsteps and then a rustling noise. Jisung’s in the wardrobe. No more footsteps? He thinks. “Jisung are you sitting in the wardrobe?”

“So what if I am?” Jisung scoffs, fumbling at the edges of the cardboard box.

Chenle hears more rustling and then a soft, “oh,” and he knows Jisung’s found what he’s looking for.

When Chenle was fifteen and first moved in with the other boys at the company, he was excited. The world had just opened up for him and he’d stood right in the middle of it, wide-eyed, relishing in what he’d thought at the time was a dream come true. He’d made friends with the others in his dorm, and memories from his first year away from home.

Remember every part of it, he’d been told. These are the best years of your life.

So he wrote them down.

Chenle was sixteen when he’d begun to dabble in mildly dangerous things like drawing his own eyeliner and learning to skate. The most mildly dangerous thing of all, he thinks, was his crush on his roommate, Jisung. Largely because he knew Jisung liked him too, and he’d had no idea what to do about it. Chenle wrote about how his blood raced whenever their hands touched, how when Jisung looked at him and smiled that beautiful smile of his, his heart sighed and ran in circles around his chest until he felt like he was going to die. Park Jisung, in all his bleached blonde beauty, was going to be the death of him. He just knew it.

Sixteen was Chenle when Jisung decided he wanted to learn how to skate too. Pestered Chenle to teach him in the basketball court behind their apartment. And how could Chenle say no?

Sixteen was when Jisung held onto Chenle’s hands while shakily standing on his skateboard. Man, he thought, standing steady on the ground while Jisung wobbled his way around the court. This really is the way I’m going to die.

And when Chenle was sixteen, he wrote about how afterwards, he’d kissed Jisung in the stairwell of their apartment, hastily and on the corner of Jisung’s rose coloured lips. He’d written about how Jisung held his face afterwards with shaking hands, and kissed him properly that time.

Sixteen was skateboards, eyeliner and kisses in the stairway.

Chenle cried on the night of his seventeenth birthday. Not because he wasn’t happy, but not because he was, either. He’d blown out his candles, sang his heart out, and ate so much ice cream he felt sick. And when the others retreated to their respective rooms after helping clean up and the music died out and the birthday candles were cleaned and stored away in zip-loc bags for the next coming-of-age ceremony, Chenle went up to the roof. He went up to the roof and he cried.

He must have been up there for quite a while, as Jisung went up to look for him not long after. He didn’t understand what was wrong, didn’t try to. Perhaps he would a year later when he himself would turn seventeen.

But on that night he just sat close to him, not saying anything. Accompanied Chenle as the full moon stared right back, a cold grey reminder of how small his place in the world really was.

Chenle wrote about how scared he was, how confused. How time was moving so fast he could feel it brushing past his ears, and how at seventeen, still, he had no idea who he was.

But he knew, he wrote, that he was with Jisung.

And Jisung was with him.

He wrote that that night, although he felt like the moon and the night air were going to tear him off the face of the earth and drag him into the deep, dark unknown, that Jisung being by his side made him feel something like grounded, something like home. And that in itself was enough.

Seventeen was birthday candles, fear, and comfortable silence.

When Chenle was eighteen, Jisung told him he loved him.

Chenle didn’t know what to say, never really did. But he knew he wasn’t lying, and he knew he loved him too. So he nodded and continued eating his ramen at the table outside the convenience store as if nothing had happened. Jisung followed suit.

Jisung was always one to vocalise his feelings. Chenle knew he kept a diary too, because when he wrote, he would read aloud to him. They were everyday stories, most of the time. But other times, they were more than that. In their three years of friendship Chenle had learned all of Jisung’s thoughts, his feelings, and his deepest darkest fears.

At eighteen Chenle knew he had to be responsible. To be grown up and make good decisions and do the right thing. But that was easy compared to the responsibility he felt being Jisung’s friend.

He questioned if he deserved to know all of this. If he was the right person to hold Jisung’s soul. To listen to his problems and look into his heart. And to hold his hand while he fell in love with the world, and with him.

That night Chenle got drunk for the first time. He didn’t drink a lot, but just enough to make him tell Jisung he loved him too, and that he was scared he would hurt him and sorry that he didn’t know how to make Jisung feel held. And Jisung just laughed. Put his hands on Chenle’s shoulders and told him it was okay.

He stopped laughing when Chenle threw up on the living room floor.

Eighteen was confessions, responsibility, and Jisung screaming when he accidentally stepped in Chenle’s vomit.

_'I don’t think I’ve ever loved someone the way I love Jisung. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as loved as I do when I’m with Jisung. I think things come and go all the time, but I think I want to know Jisung for the rest of my life._

“Hey,” Chenle says softly, hands still shaking, even now, “you still there?”

His response is some loud sniffing coming from the other side of the phone call.

“My plane is opening boarding soon. I’ll have to go in about five minutes. I just want you to keep that notebook, okay? It’s everything I was too much of a coward to say to you in person. And I love you. I hope you know that. And I’m sorry I-,”

“No.” Jisung says, voice broken but firm. “You did good. You did so good. Don’t ever tell yourself you were less than that. You’re more than you could ever be. And you always will be. You’ll always be my best friend. I love you.”

The next ten minutes is something of a daze, of boarding passes and overhead lockers and finding assigned seats in said winged metal tube. Chenle can’t help but wish he had his best friend next to him.

But he has the feeling he gets when Jisung comes home after practise. When he gets a text message from him during one of his online classes. He knows how it feels when Jisung smiles at him with all his teeth and his eyes crinkle up at the sides and he looks so pretty that Chenle wants to launch himself into the sun. The way he feels when Jisung’s eyes are wide open though, and he’s gazing at Chenle like he’s the best thing that’s ever happened? He’s got it painted in his mind in permanent ink.

He’s always with him, even when he’s not.

Jisung is.

And Chenle will remember that forever.

**Author's Note:**

> twt @dreamscng ; chenle says stay safe and be kind to yourself <3


End file.
